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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | New drought manual may aggravate farm distress -Nidhi Jamwal

New drought manual may aggravate farm distress -Nidhi Jamwal

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published Published on Jan 25, 2018   modified Modified on Jan 25, 2018
-VillageSquare.in

Strict parameters set by the central government has made it tougher for the states to declare a drought and seek relief funds from New Delhi

Mumbai (Maharashtra): The Indian government is leaving no stone unturned to fight the occurrence of drought in the country. The Manual for Drought Management, released in December 2016 by the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, prescribes “new scientific indices and parameters” for a “more accurate assessment of drought” in the country.

The five categories of indices listed in the new manual, which include rainfall, agriculture, soil moisture, hydrology, and remote sensing (health of crops), are expected to help the state governments make scientific assessment of drought rather than “rely on the traditional practice such as annewari / paisewari / girdawari system of eye estimation and crop cutting experiments”.

However, representatives of farmers’ groups and agriculture sector experts say that strict parameters for drought declaration in the new manual will make things worse for the farmers, especially in drought-prone areas of the country. In Maharashtra’s Vidarbha and Marathwada regions, which are infamous for farmer suicides and consecutive droughts, implementation of the new drought manual may act as the last nail in the coffin of the farmers, who are already taking their own lives due to repeated crop failure, indebtedness and other factors.

Droughts will be underreported

“At the outset, the new manual acknowledges that drought has complex nature and varying characteristics that manifest across different agro-climatic regions in different ways. But, it then goes on to prescribe very strict indices for declaration of drought across six climatic zones in the country,” K J Joy, senior fellow with Pune-based Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM) told VillageSquare.in. “If the new manual is followed, then several droughts in the country will go unreported.”

He is not wrong. So far, the Maharashtra government used to follow the paisewari system (originally referred to as annewari) for declaring a drought. In the paisewari system, if there is a rainfall deficit and the crop yield is less than 50% of the average of 10 years, then that is considered a drought year. If the paisewari system is applied, then at present 9,000 villages in Maharashtra, including 3,500 villages in Marathwada, have reported paisewari less than 50 paise.

But, officially these 9,000 villages are not drought-affected because last October the state government issued a Government Resolution (GR) in line with the Centre’s new drought manual, and adopted new indices to declare drought in the state.

As per a recent news report, over 136 talukas or administrative blocks had approached the state government to be declared drought hit, but only three talukas from Gondia district have made it to the category of moderate drought under the new criteria prescribed in the manual.

Moderate drought is no longer eligible for relief funds from the Centre. The 2016 manual makes it clear that only if the calamity is of “severe nature” can the state governments submit a memorandum for financial assistance under the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF). For mild and moderate droughts, the states have to shell out their own funds.

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VillageSquare.in, 24 January, 2018, https://www.villagesquare.in/2018/01/24/new-drought-manual-may-aggravate-farm-distress/


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